Rev. 10/12/2023
EN 500 – 001
X-listed with WS 530
Purvis
W 2:00pm – 4:30pm
Special Topics: Self-Other-Abject: Monstrosity and the Workings of Alterity in Feminist Theory
Open to graduate students from all areas with an interest in feminist theory, this interdisciplinary approach to feminist theory locates a major generative moment for contemporary feminist theory in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949), in which she establishes the self-other paradigm. This course explores the self/other binary (being-for-itself and being-in-itself), the subject-object split, mind-body dualism, and other oppositions that emerge from the ubiquitous self-other framework, as well as how a third term—”mere flesh,” the inhuman other, the disposable, the abject—upsets the binary logic that has dominated our thinking about oppressions for over half a century. From French Feminisms’ monstrous feminine to the present, the notion of radical otherness exposes systems of belonging and mattering that define citizens, subjects, nations, and regions and organize humanity along the lines of gender, race, sexuality, ability, and class. Those who are marginalized often resist associations with alterity; however, authors, such as Jessica Benjamin, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Tina Chanter, Barbara Creed, Judith Butler, Jack Halberstam, Christina Sharpe, Amber Jamilla Musser, Rosi Braidotti, Hil Malatino, and others challenge us to think through and beyond the ways in which otherness and abjection are harmful. These authors invite us to think outside the terms of normalcy, inclusion, and the human, question central binaries, and explore spaces of liminality. Drawing their insights from a variety of fields or areas of feminist study—including psychoanalytic and French feminisms; queer theory and other theories of gender, race, sexuality, and embodiment; feminist art and film theory; feminist philosophy; and disability studies—the authors in this course examine transgression, borders, leakiness, dirt, danger, zombies, vampires, monstrous others, sexual deviants, zones of uninhabitability, the grotesque, the carnivalesque, and other categories and concepts associated with the harms of abjection as well as the power and potential associated with reclaiming the monstrous, harnessing radical alterity, and ultimately challenging an “us/them” world. (Prerequisites: none)
EN 500 – 002
X-listed with EN 466
Poole
MW 3:00pm – 4:15pm
Special Topics: Ecolinguistics
The interdisciplinary field of ecolinguistics explores the role of language in the life-sustaining interactions of humans, other species, and the physical environment. Ecolinguistics seeks to challenge discourses which normalize and perpetuate ways of being that contribute to ecological degradation. Additionally, ecolinguistics aims to identify and promote discourses which more positively accord with ecological wellbeing, justice, and sustainability. In the course, we will engage with readings from ecolinguistics, environmental communication, critical discourse analysis, human-animal studies, eco-stylistics, and more as we explore various topics (e.g., climate change discourse, representations of animals in media, depictions of place, climate fiction, etc.) and approaches (e.g., corpus-assisted discourse analysis, eco-stylistics, stance analysis) with the ultimate aim of producing our own ecolinguistic analyses of texts of ecological relevance.
EN 512
Buck
T 2:00pm – 4:30pm
Computers and Writing
An examination of the role of digital technology in writing and writing instruction. This course provides an overview of computers and writing as a disciplinary field within rhetoric and composition, including historical trajectory and major and recent trends (from word processing to multimodal composition to ChatGPT.) The class readings consider both the theoretical and pedagogical implications of digital writing technologies. Students will compose both print and digital projects in this course.
EN 529 – 001
Crank
Directed Reading – Literature
EN 529 – 002
Estes
Directed Readings – Creative Writing
EN 534
001 – Loper
002 – Palmer
003 – Niiler
TR 12:30pm – 1:30pm
Practicum in Teaching College English 102
Spring semester only. Required of all graduate assistants teaching EN 102 for the first time. Training in reaching EN 102 course goals and writing outcomes. Further instruction in teaching formal argumentation and advanced research techniques.
Non-Thesis Research
EN 598-002 Crank
EN 598-003 Estes
Thesis Research
EN 599-001 Crank
EN 599-002 Estes
EN 599-003 Worden-Chambers
EN 599-004 Poole
EN 601 – 001
Nkweti
R 2:00 – 4:30pm
Fiction Workshop
How do we mine the gritty, the fantastical, and the comedic to tell our tales? What makes one worthy of the telling? Why do some stories go unvoiced and untold? This course will explore these questions through readings across a vibrant array of work including fiction from writers like Octavia Butler, Danielle Evans, Alice Sola Kim, and Diane Cook, as well as delving into alternative narrative forms – film, graphic novels, and music. Through a rigorous schedule of personal writing, workshops, readings, in-class assignments, and thoughtful discussion; students can expect to become keen and respectful readers, understand elements of craft, as well as develop a consistent writing practice and a bold creative voice. By the end of the course, you shall generate a polished, fiction manuscript (20-40 pp). Active in-class participation is mandatory.
EN 603 – 001
Brouwer
R 10:00am – 12:30pm
Poetry Workshop
This is a workshop course, and the majority of our time will be spent discussing the poems you will write. However, on the theory that lively reading may aid and abet the production of lively writing, we will also read and discuss poetry and criticism by others. In summary, it will be fun.
EN 608 – 001
Estes
T 2:00pm – 4:30pm
Forms Special Topics: The Writing Life
In chapter one of The Writing Life Annie Dillard begins, “When you write you lay out a line of words.” In one sense, that’s the whole of it. But then again, of course it’s not! In this class, as you work on and bring to the group parts and wholes of your own individual projects, we will explore what writers across time and cultures and genres have said about the writing life, and seek to glean from them, as well as from our own efforts, the wisdom—both practical and esoteric—necessary to sustain a practice. What does one get from an MFA? A good answer to that question is: a start on the wisdom necessary to sustain a practice. In both our lives and our writing, we will seek to mark out a zone or territory reserved for invention and the dream, and explore the laws and vagaries thereof, to include all aspects: the business of it, the spirit of it, the costs of it. Yeats famously said that we must choose “Perfection of the life, or of the work,” a provocation that invites itself to be tested. The aim will be that to end the semester with progress on your writing and progress on your life.
EN 608 – 002
T 10:00am – 12:30pm
AND W 2:00pm – 4:30pm
Rawlings
Forms of Creative Writing: The Craft of Revision
Is your idea of revision to stare at what you’ve written with the hope that you’ll figure out how to fix it? Do you often put drafts away and then just abandon them? If so, you may want to try revising your idea of revision. In this class, we’ll practice revision as craft and play, experimenting with a variety of techniques to help you open up a piece, make it fresher, edgier, deeper, more cogent, or into something you didn’t think you were capable of writing. Note that we will be doing revision work both in and out of class. All genres welcome.
EN 608 – 003
M 10:00am – 12:30pm
Brorby
Queering the Memoir
In this course we’ll look at a variety of memoirs from the queer community, studying their form, their craft, and if anything, in particular, feels “queer” about how they’re written and constructed.
EN 608 – 004
W 10:00am – 12:30pm
Champagne
Writing the Book-Length Project
This generative writing course is designed to support writers seeking to complete a full draft of a work of fiction, nonfiction, or autofiction. Workshops will offer questions and encouragement toward idea- and world-building rather than prescriptive suggestions or editorial advisement. Before the start of the course, students enrolling should ideally have a partial draft of a novel/memoir (or a detailed outline of their project).
EN 608 – 005
W 2:00pm – 4:30pm
Rawlings
Forms of Creative Writing: The Craft of Revision
Is your idea of revision to stare at what you’ve written with the hope that you’ll figure out how to fix it? Do you often put drafts away and then just abandon them? If so, you may want to try revising your idea of revision. In this class, we’ll practice revision as craft and play, experimenting with a variety of techniques to help you open up a piece, make it fresher, edgier, deeper, more cogent, or into something you didn’t think you were capable of writing. Note that we will be doing revision work both in and out of class. All genres welcome.
EN 609 – 001
M 1:00pm – 1:50pm
Estes
Forms Theory Practice: CW Pedagogy
This is a course designed to support first-time teachers of creative writing, with a communal space to explore strategies for effective teaching and creative writing pedagogy.
EN 609 – 320
MW 6:00pm – 7:30pm via ZOOM
Dates: 2/12-3/6
Estes / visiting writer Hugh Sheehy
This intensive will be taught by visiting fiction writer Hugh Sheehy. Students will study and work from literary uses of technique and form associated with genres of mystery, detective story, thriller, horror, urban legend, fairy tale, romance, and science fiction.
EN 609 – 321
M 5:00pm – 5:50pm
Brorby
Forms Theory Practice: Poetry In Place
In this course we’re explore situating our poetry in place, discussing classic and contemporary poets who have found inspiration at home and in their travels. To help us, we’ll explore the University campus and beyond to see how new places might help inspire our own poetic pursuits.
EN 610 – 001
W 2:00pm – 4:30pm
Selvi
TESOL: Theory and Methods
This course offers a survey of the historical and current approaches, methods, and techniques of TESOL with connections to their theoretical bases and practical applications in teaching language skills (e.g., reading, writing, listening, and speaking) and other language components/systems (e.g., grammar and vocabulary). Discussions on teaching methods and skills will be facilitated by theoretical discussions around the linguistic, psychological, and social aspects of second language learning, successful teaching principles and strategies, choosing materials, assessment, culture in the classroom, and technology as a classroom resource.
EN 612 – 001
R 2:00pm – 4:30pm
Poole
Technologies for second/foreign language teaching and learning
This graduate seminar explores the application of various technologies for second/foreign language teaching and learning. The course will survey research in computer-assisted language learning (CALL) and technology-enhanced language learning (TELL) with a particular focus on corpus-based approaches, generative AI, digital games, apps such as Duolingo, and social media. The goal of the course is to prepare students to be able to critically review technologies for language learning and make theory-informed, research-based pedagogical choices for their classrooms.
Students registering for this class should have backgrounds in language teaching and learning and have completed (or be currently enrolled in) courses in second language acquisition, linguistics, and language pedagogy.
EN 612 – 002
T 2:00pm – 4:30pm
Selvi
Topics in Applied Linguistics: Action Research in TESOL
This course offers a reflective, systematic and transformative opportunity to closely examine their English language teaching-learning practices and develop action-based solutions to improve their practices. Through various readings, discussions, and assignments, course participants will delve into the core principles of action research, cultivate their skills in research methodology (data collection, analysis and interpretation, collaborative learning, self-study, needs assessment, and ethics), and engage in research-informed decision making to address real-world classroom challenges. By the end of this course, course participants will be equipped with a critically-oriented stance as “transformative intellectuals” and a professional skillset used to initiate meaningful change in their classrooms, ultimately contributing to the advancement of their teaching practices and teaching-learning context.
EN 617 – 001
M 2:00pm – 4:30pm
Worden-Chambers
Teaching ESL Academic Language Skills
This course is a theoretical and pedagogical introduction to the teaching of English academic language skills to adult learners of English with a particular focus on teaching writing in the American university context. We will examine the theories and disciplines that have significantly informed second language writing research and pedagogy. Additionally, we will examine some of the emerging issues in the field of second language writing including such topics as translingual practice, identity and politics second language writing, multilingual creativity, and the increasingly multilingual student population at US universities. We will build on this theoretical foundation to develop skills in a variety of pedagogical practices including needs analysis, course design, assignment design, lesson planning, writing assessment, responding to student writing, and error correction.
This course is open to TESOL, CRES, LIT, or MFA students.
EN 635 – 001
TR 8:00am – 9:15am
Wittman
Literary Criticism
This course offers an introduction to the history of translation practices through a study of critical essays from Jerome and John Dryden to Walter Benjamin and Vladimir Nabokov as well as through comparative analysis of English-language translations. Class time will be divided between analysis of theoretical writing and evaluative discussion of competing English-language translations. This course will demonstrate that the history of English-language literature is a history of translation, that it owes it development to the efforts of translators, many of them invisible. One of the purposes of the course is to make students aware of the central issues in the burgeoning field of translation studies, including the social and economic factors that come into play whenever we ferry texts between languages, cultures, and eras. The methods and procedures that we study will lead to discussion of gender, poetics, ideology, class, and nationhood. We will devote particular attention to the changing valences of the key concept of equivalence. Over the course of the semester we will explore the practice and consequences of literary translation, learning about the role translations play in the interpretation and consecration of literature. What gets translated? Who translates it? What approach to translation is used?
We will explore the place of translation in the trajectories of English-language literature in the twentieth century. Special emphasis will be given to twentieth-century theory and the work of key twentieth-century translators including Ezra Pound, Louis Zukofsky, and Constance Garnett. How have recent translators challenged traditional requirements for translation and “fidelity,” such as fluency in the source language and a scholarly background in the source culture? How does global mobility change the landscape for translators?
This course is open to all students and there is no language requirement. Assignments include a term paper, a translation exercise, and a presentation. Students will draw up a final project in consultation with the professor.
EN 637 – 001
T 2:00pm – 4:30pm
Trout
Workshop in Academic Writing
The purpose of this seminar is to get you published in a peer-reviewed venue! To that end, I will use one of my own recent journal articles–an analysis of African American war experience in William Faulkner’s Flags in the Dust–as a sample to illustrate the various stages of bringing a scholarly essay into print. We’ll read Faulkner’s novel, followed by drafts of the essay, readers’ reports, and correspondence with the editor of the Mississippi Quarterly. This will take us a couple weeks or so. The rest of the course will consist of an intensive workshop focused on your work, which you will submit to a peer-reviewed journal during the final week of class.
EN 639 – 001
R 2:00pm – 4:30pm
Dziuba
Special Topics Rhetoric and Composition: Once More, with Feeling: Emotions in Comp/Rhet
Pathos: one of three rhetorical appeals used to persuade an audience. Per Aristotle and others, effective rhetors harness their listeners’/readers’ emotions to bend their judgment in the desired direction. But what if we consider emotions as more than means to argumentative ends? Indeed, emotion suffuses our writing, reading, and orientations to the world around us.
This course will investigate the role of emotions in composition and rhetoric, paying particular attention to issues of race, gender, and sexuality and to implications for pedagogy. In addition to readings in the discipline, we will take an eclectic textual approach, with excursions into visual art, music, literature, political science, psychology, and critical theory.
This course will be open first to students in the CRES program, after which all students will have an opportunity to register.
EN 643 – 001
W 2:00pm – 4:30pm
Cardon
Seminar in 20th-Century American Literature
In his famous July 1980 speech “Fighting Words on the Future of the Earth,” American Indian Movement activist Russell Means stated, “Being is a spiritual proposition. Gaining is a material act…. The European materialist tradition of despiritualizing the universe is very similar to the mental process which goes into dehumanizing another person.”
Means’ indictment of American and European culture in this speech points to a history of western hegemony over both people and the natural environment. These forms of subjugation have historically been justified in terms of “progress,” “civilization,” and “necessity”––even at times in terms of “the natural order of things.” In this course, we’ll explore the relationship between the American people and the environment through an ecocritical lens, as we immerse ourselves in the genre of “ecofiction,” or environmental literature.
Our reading list spans multiple genres of contemporary American literature, beginning in the 1960s with Frank Herbert’s sci-fi epic Dune, encompassing the Afrofuturist narratives of Octavia Butler and N.K. Jemisin, the Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer short story collection Love After the End, and recent climate fiction like Richard Powers’ The Overstory and Jeffrey VanderMeer’s Annihilation. We’ll engage a host of critical perspectives and discourses, from environmental justice theories to ecofeminism to queer ecology, just to name a few.
In addition to our readings, this class emphasizes professional development as scholars, writers, and teachers as we address the following: How do we write scholarship on novels that have no scholarship written about them? How do we teach non-canonical literature? How do we deal with novels that feel progressive and socially responsible in one respect but extremely problematic in another?
EN 648 – 001
W 10:00am – 12:30pm
Steverson
Seminar in African American Literature
In his provocative argument about the state of African American literature, Kenneth Warren (2011) asserted that African American literature is no more—that the literature we distinctly name African American had emerged in protest of state-sanctioned racial violence and had, therefore, ended with the dismantling of Jim Crow. His bold claims led several scholars in the field, including Rafia Zafar, Gene Jarrett, Marlon Ross and others, to critically inquire and re-evaluate the identity, purposes, and literary history of the field. This course, then, incorporates this rich exchange as a springboard to investigate the implications of this debate and beyond. We will focus on a variety of themes and topics—including Black uplift, slavery, respectability politics, identity, protest, publishing, the politics of art, among others—to understand the history of, locate, and challenge assumptions about the field of African American literature.
Questions to consider: What is/was/isn’t African American literature? Why does that even matter? What are the purposes of African American literature? How have writers and scholars both embraced, challenge, and distanced themselves from the designation?
EN 654 – 001
W 10:00am – 12:30pm
Fitzsimmons
Seminar in Visual and Digital Rhetoric
This course introduces students to theories, methodologies, and key debates within rhetorical theory for studying digital and visual rhetoric. While we will cover a variety of examples and themes, we will pay particular attention to how digital and visual texts and strategies are used in activism, public discourse, and political debate. We will cover topics such as circulation and remixing of images, historical movements in the field towards visual/digital/multimodal composition, the ways digital platforms enable and constrain public discourse, digital counter/public spaces, pedagogical strategies for incorporating visual and digital texts into our teaching of writing, and the ways visual and digital means of composing might help us reimagine what scholarship and pedagogy can look like or do. Students will gain familiarity with key theoretical frameworks and scholarly work in visual and digital rhetorics, practice applying these theories and appropriate methods to analyzing everyday examples of visual and digital rhetoric, engage with digital and visual projects and journals within our field, and learn practical applications of these theories and bodies of work for their own teaching and scholarship.
EN 669 – 001
M 2:00pm – 4:30pm
Dowd
The Strode Seminar: Teaching Shakespeare
Shakespeare is one of the most commonly taught authors at both the high school and the college level today, whether in specialty courses on Shakespeare’s plays, British literature surveys, or introductory courses focused on poetry, drama, or literature more broadly. This course welcomes all PhD, MA, and MFA students with an interest in learning more about contemporary approaches to teaching Shakespeare. Throughout the semester, we will explore the Shakespearean pedagogical tradition and consider a variety of different classroom approaches, ranging from the more traditional (close reading/formalism) to those directly engaged with contemporary sociopolitical concerns (including race, social justice, gender and sexuality). We will focus on four or five plays that are widely taught today (exact texts TBD, but they likely will include Romeo and Juliet, Othello, The Tempest, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream). Schedules permitting, we will also plan to welcome one or two guest speakers to class (remotely or in-person) to share their pedagogical research and expertise. Students in the course will develop assignments, syllabi, and lesson plans that they can tailor to their own career goals and interests. Open to all PhD, MA, and MFA students.
EN 683 – 001
TR 9:30am – 10:45am
Weiss
Seminar in Romantic Literature: The British Gothic Novel
The horror genre as we know it today has its roots in the British Gothic, a literary and artistic mode known for Medieval castles, supernatural occurrences, victimized women, and the heightened emotions of terror and awe. Beneath the frightful trappings of the genre, indeed motivating them, are the secret fears and hidden desires of a society in transition. During its long heyday—from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth centuries—the Gothic novel served as a form of storytelling through which British culture explored forbidden passions within the context of the frightful, unstoppable transition to modernity. Originally a genre that developed in resistance to the Enlightenment, a genre that prioritized passion over reason, religion over secularism, feudalism over democracy, and medievalism over neoclassicism, the Gothic evolved to confront the challenges of nineteenth-century society. As the century advanced, the genre maintained its origins while expanding to include new objects of fear and fascination, including the rapid progress of technology and industrialization, shifts in attitudes toward sexuality and gender, the decline of the aristocracy and the rise of the middle class, the growth of cities, the expansion of the urban poor, and the spread of empire. With its emphasis on the disruptive power of that which society wants to deny, repress, and hide, the Gothic novel stands as a genre of tremendous revelatory power, offering readers insights into the deep-seated anxieties and repressed desires that remain a fundamental part of modern society. This course will trace the development of the British Gothic novel from its origins in the eighteenth century to its highpoint at the end of the nineteenth. Texts are likely to include The Castle of Otranto, The Romance of the Forest, Confessions of a Justified Sinner, Wuthering Heights, Carmilla, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Dracula. The course is open to all graduate students in the English Department. Course requirements will consist of weekly short writing assignments (1-2 pp) and a long, research-based paper (15 pp). No creative work will be accepted as a substitute for literary-critical assignments.